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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019346">o'er the trees to hades.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickstered/pseuds/trickstered'>trickstered</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, Gen, Minor Dirk Stider, Minor Roxy Lalonde, Pesterquest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:54:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,484</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019346</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/trickstered/pseuds/trickstered</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose mourns a life she will never have; Dave tries to pick up the pieces.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>o'er the trees to hades.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>rose lalonde and i are grieving together, thank u and goodnight.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s six thirty when the rain starts. It comes in a downpour, dampening the very last embers of weakened flames. It soaks through the broken concrete and the couch; through the shredded cushions and the torn-up curtains. The kitchen is safe, and the upstairs bedrooms, but the gaping hole of the living room wall is open and raw, and Rose watches it with a deafening silence.</p><p>It’s been hours now. She knows the exact number down to the seconds and knows how many she has left. Things have changed, the way things sometimes do. In dreams, sometimes, she is a different Rose: sometimes she is a thousand different Rose’s. She knows that she is now the different Rose, and some other, slightly more important Rose, will dream of her and learn from her. The cycle is circular and expansive; it has no end and no beginning.</p><p>At six thirty-seven, Rose Lalonde looks around the broken and blackened remnants of her living room, and she feels weary.</p><p>-</p><p>Dave comes later, closer to midnight than not. He doesn’t bother knocking, because there is simply not a door left to knock upon. He finds her in the kitchen, drone on the counter dismantled into pieces. He looks at her and then back towards the living room and grinds his back teeth together. Pensive, she thinks. Angry.</p><p>She’s angry too, somewhere deep down. Somewhere beneath the grief and the exhaustion.</p><p>“Once again your timing is impeccable,” she says, and doesn’t mean to be cruel. It isn’t his fault.</p><p>He presses himself back against the counter that houses the sink, arms folded. “What the hell happened?”</p><p>In her hand is a metal tube; it is <em>loud </em>when it comes down hard against the counter. “I had my living room destroyed. I’m fine, by the way, thank you for asking.”</p><p>Her hands are shaking, he notes. The silence feels heavy; it feels thick, and greasy, and Dave sighs, loud and long, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry. Sorry, I just meant. You know, we had a timeline for this. We had irons in fires, we had plans in fuckin’ plans. What the hell happened here? You didn’t See this – this wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? <em>Was it?” </em></p><p> “No,” she says, like she can read his mind. Like the very idea that she could conceal something of this magnitude on purpose is absurd. Sometimes he doesn’t know. Sometimes Rose is harder to read than the shit she sells as a best seller. “No, the timeline has spun ahead of us. We have been left behind in the doomed aftermath. Things have diverged too much now for us to even hope of fixing this.”</p><p>For a moment, the world spins. He is himself, and then he is another himself. Another, and another, all of them in different places. His hand catches the counter behind him, knuckles white. <em>This is not a panic attack, </em>he tells himself and only half-believes it. “What does that mean for us?”</p><p>Rose turns her attention to the drone. “We go on as normal. <em>She </em>isn’t aware that we have been left behind, and doomed timeline or not, I won’t let her win without a fight.”   </p><p>It’s almost funny how grounded he feels after that.</p><p>-</p><p>At seven the next morning, Dave is cleaning out debris. He makes phone calls; pulls strings to have workmen arrive within the day to start construction work. The entire morning he’s tense, eyes drawn to every window, waiting for some kind of phase two attack that never comes. Rose busies herself with moving the sentimental things upstairs, out of his way. He doesn’t ask about it; if he’s honest, he’s surprised to find her with any sentimentality at all. He finds her later in the second bedroom. Pink in every capacity, filled to the brim with all the sentiment she’s managed to save. She sits on the unmade bed, a doll in hand and when she sees him, she scrubs her eyes fast, furious. She slept here, he thinks. She must have.</p><p>He understands, he thinks. To some degree. He has a room too, in a house he never lives in. Every month he sends something new to it. Something he thinks <em>he </em>would like. That he might find useful. Sentimentality is Dave’s thing, after all. More so than the irony, or the Hollywood meltdowns. “Sorry,” he says for what must be the tenth time in twenty-four hours.</p><p>“No, it’s fine,” she says and he thinks that it probably isn’t, but he’s seen her now. “Did you need something?”</p><p>“Nah. Someone’s coming at three to start work on the front. You hungry? Thirsty?”</p><p>She isn’t looking at him. Her eyes are focused on the doll, her thumbs pressed in tight under its fabric ribs. She opens her mouth as if to answer, and then says nothing at all. It isn’t like her, is the thing. None of this is, and maybe that’s what compels him to step in and sit beside her. Maybe that’s what compels her to rest her head on his shoulder. Nothing about this is ordinary, he thinks, and maybe they won’t speak of it. Maybe they won’t have to.</p><p>“She was here,” Rose says at last, her voice distantly awed.</p><p>“Yeah, I know. It’s gonna be okay, you and me? We were made for this. For –“</p><p>“No,” she says, tired. “Not her. Roxy. <em>Roxy</em> was here.”</p><p>His hand is in her hair before she even finishes the sentence. “Oh, Rose,” he says, and wishes he were better at this. “It’s not –“</p><p>“She was never supposed to be here, Dave. I had already mourned, and accepted. I had cast my grief to the very core of myself and used it to drive my rage. To fight. And then there she was, right in front of me. Dave, she was so beautiful. I –“</p><p>Once, when they were much younger, Dave held Rose while she cried. It had been after a dream, the tears for someone whom she had never met. Whom she would never meet. He hadn’t known what to do with her tears then, and now he’s even less sure. He’s not sure what <em>this </em>is. “Hey,” he says, as gentle as he can be. “Hey, I’m sure she will be. Hey, come one Lalonde, it’s fine. It’s fine, come on.”</p><p>“I’m not being hysterical, Dave,” and it’s the first time Dave has ever heard someone be exasperated while sobbing. “I’m telling you that she was here, in my very living room. That – that person, was here too, <em>meddling. </em>She was here and now everything has gone tits up, and perhaps it’s selfish of me to be glad, but I am.”</p><p>Selfish, he thinks, is not exactly the word. Time is his other thing; he feels it, sometimes. Seconds, hours; years. Sometimes he feels the threads under his fingertips, a quiet hum that he is close to touching and never quite able to. He has felt no disruptions, yet. He has felt no movement, no pauses. It unnerves him, he realises, much more than Rose’s controlled sobbing. He barely realises he’s gone completely silent. Not until:</p><p>“Dave?”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“You – are you alright?”</p><p><em>Am I? </em>he thinks. <em>Am I? </em>“Yeah,” he says, and squeezes her around the shoulders. “Yeah, ‘course I am. You know me, nothin’ ever phases me. I’m happy for you, Rose. I bet she looked just like you, a real snobby lookin’ broad with a tongue that could cut silver. Just thinking of two of you gives me goosebumps, god<em>damn</em>.”</p><p>Her laughter is soft; it’s unlike any laugh of hers he’s ever heard before. “No,” she says, awed again. “No. She looked … Good. Kind.” <em>Not like me</em>, he almost hears her say.</p><p>-</p><p>He leaves her two days later. He doesn’t go home to his own place in New York. He has a feeling that if he does, trouble might follow. Instead he goes where he feels a calling too. He flies economy to Texas, dresses down and grabs a cab to the apartment building he owns.</p><p>Inside there are boxes piled high, furniture covered in dust sheets. It’s not a home, really. It’s a safe house; it’s an apology. It’s a pitiful cry of longing. He reaches for the hum and feels the changes, at last. He waits for a ripple; waits for a string to be plucked that shouldn’t be. He sits in this place that should have been theirs and he waits and waits for someone who never comes.</p><p>(When he shuts his eyes and reaches one last time, desperate, he finds himself within himself: eyes seeing through different eyes. A black hole; someone like him; someone not like him. It all moves so fast, speeding and pulling him apart. He thinks <em>no, this isn’t what I wanted</em>, and he hears his own voice answer back: <em>sure it is. </em></p><p>And then</p><p>he</p><p><span class="dirknarrative">Sees</span>. )</p>
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